Day 12 PM: Denali National Park

Fabulous afternoon of game and mountain viewing on the Tundra Wilderness Tour. Most of Denali National Park is wilderness, accessible only on foot or dog sled. There is only one road that goes a mere 80 miles into the vast wilderness and private cars are only allowed on a fraction of that. Access is by shuttle bus or tour. We chose to take a tour. The guide was extremely knowledgeable as well as personable. He promised to get us home by dark. In fact, it won't be dark before August. We got home at 10:30 PM and fell into bed--the reason you didn't get a blog post before this.

We saw a moose before we ever got out of the traffic jam of tour buses and RVs around the Visitor Center.

Later we saw a moose cow and an adolescent running across a mountainside, but never did figure out what had spooked them. Bear? Wold? We saw a mother grizzly with three cubs as well as caribou, arctic ground squirrel, spruce grouse, a gere falcon, and a whole flock of Dall sheep (including a couple babies) right by the road. It helped to have multiple sets of eyes on a full bus.

And then there are the wild flowers...

And the vistas!

We "lucked out" (experienced unusual grace of God?) by coming at this time of year. We didn't know, but evidently most visitors in July and August never see "The Mountain" as Denali gets called, in their whole visit. We have had glorious views. The day was cloudless and relatively warm although windy. The different environments and awesome vistas would have been worth the hours in the bus even without spotting animals.

Fell into bed exhausted, but exhilarated with the day.

Afghan update: Definitely no knitting on this drive!